


Hobson's Choice

by Fides



Series: Spyverse [2]
Category: Torchwood, X Files
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, Kink, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-09-19
Updated: 2008-09-19
Packaged: 2017-10-02 00:19:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/643
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fides/pseuds/Fides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alex continues with Torchwood 3 but when tragedy strikes there are hard choices to face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to moth2fic for the beta. Any remaining mistakes are my own.
> 
> Slight spoilers for X-Files and Torchwood.

Plan A had been simple: he held back while the others went in. Then Jack talked, Owen worked on the injured, Tosh worked on the biotech and Gwen covered them or helped as needed. It played to their strengths but there wasn't much else you could do when you had a psychopathic alien with trapped civilians and a rather nasty bit of biological weaponry on your hands. Alex had his position, he had his gun and he had his orders, so he watched the exit and he waited. Just another shadow on a rooftop.

"Get ready." Ianto's voice was soft in his ear, the only sound other than the wind he had heard for hours. How Ianto knew when communications with anyone inside the building were down Alex didn't ask; he had been around long enough to trust that it was so.

Like a magic trick reveal, the team were there in the doorway, backing out in a vaguely threatening scramble. He couldn't hear them but their body language told Alex that they had probably passed Plan B some time ago and were quickly making their way through the rest of the alphabet. Alex counted them out... one... two... three... then something that wasn't human. Had someone stayed with the civilians? Alex tracked the alien automatically as it emerged limb by less-identifiable-body-part. The only weak spot was in its central body node. Organs, brain, central nervous system, all clustered together into one small target area. An area which was about to fill his vision. Alex's finger tightened on the trigger in preparation and the area inched into... Alex blinked, hand loosening.

"Ianto. He has a hostage."

"Can you still get the shot?" Did the computer distort their voices to make them sound calmer? More in control?

"Not a kill." Did his voice sound as raspy to Ianto as it did within his own head? "I could get a limb but the vitals are blocked." Alex licked his dried lips and adjusted his aim.

There was silence over the radio. Alex wasn't a sniper but when they had made their plans the choice had come down to himself or Gwen as external last resort, which really meant there had been no choice. While she was a much better shot than he had assumed when he had first met her, he had had much more experience pulling the trigger with deliberate premeditation. Really there wasn't that much difference between sniping and assassination... and how screwed up was it that he kept telling himself that for comfort. It was the distance he didn't like. Murder should be up close and personal so you didn't forget the reality of what you were doing, didn't forget that the 'merchandise' or the 'mark' or the 'target' had other names and other faces. Murder shouldn't be as easy as the high velocity rifle and the telescopic sight made it. Just like mass murder shouldn't be as easy as a whispered order or the touch of a button. He had been responsible for both and, not that he liked the blood and stink, he preferred the honesty of his dead being able to see the whites of his eyes. Or at least the possibility that they could have done if they had been looking in the right direction since he wasn't, after all, suicidal.

"I have a leg clear," Alex reiterated. "That might distract him enough for the others to move in".

He didn't really believe it but what was the alternative? He'd been shown the bio-scans and the unpronounceable bastards had been designed for battle and either they went down or they kept going. Little concept of pain, or conscience, and therefore no middle ground.

"If you shot the hostage?" Ianto asked.

It took Alex a second to process the question.

"Yes on the alien. Not sure I could guarantee a non-kill shot on the hostage."

He wished he knew what was going on down there and wondered if Ianto did.

"Your priority is taking down the alien," Ianto reaffirmed. "They think it's going for a second trigger."

Alex took a deep breath. Death and he were, if not old friends at least past the borrowing a cup of sugar stage. Nor were betrayal or sacrifice to a greater cause new to him and this wouldn't be the first colleague or even lover he had hung out to dry. But he had hoped Torchwood would be different. For all he missed his games with Mulder he had been enjoying being a team member rather than a rat bastard. Maybe it should have been Gwen up here. She would have told Ianto to find another way. Would have refused to pull the trigger on a comrade rather than settling down deeper into position and calculating angles and trajectories. There had to be a way to take down the alien without killing his human shield. There had to be. Didn't there?

"Alex," Ianto's voice was cold and final, "take the shot."

His finger squeezed the trigger and statue-still he watched although all he could see was a red poppy as it bloomed against a blue sky and glazed eyes looking, impossibly, into his. Then everything was falling, rushing into confusion; target and hostage, his teammates dropping beside the dead? wounded? The static in his ear was human voices, babbling updates he didn't need to know as the jamming dropped with its controller. All he could let it mean was that his immediate job was done. He slipped the safety on and his headset off, allowing it the luxury he couldn't allow himself of dropping against his gun.

It was a decision he had made a long time ago.


	2. Chapter 2

"I thought you might still be here."

Alex didn't turn his head at the intrusion, wondering what it would take to be left alone again. The stock of the rifle was comforting under his hand. It was deadly, but deadly with a purpose which was more than Alex was sure he had at that moment.

"Good choice of position," the irritatingly even, Welsh voice continued, disregarding Alex's lack of response, "and easier to get to than the roof next door."

So it _had_ been Ianto whom Alex had seen, and ignored, quarter of an hour before. That didn't bode well. Not if Ianto was actually looking for him. People tended to get upset when those close to them died. It was one of the reasons that Alex made a point not to be around during the aftermath, his slight fuck up with Mulder being the exception that reinforced the rule. All of Jack's team had been close to Jack and, beyond that, Alex had his own, pretty much confirmed, suspicions about how close Ianto had been to his boss. Ianto sounded so worryingly unaffected that Alex had to wonder if Owen had given him something. The other alternative was just disturbing; Ianto had never struck Alex as psychotic and he prided himself on being able to spot the ones who had less humanity than the aliens. Alex had been with Torchwood Three the shortest time and knew himself to be a cold-hearted bastard but even he was feeling the effects of Jack's death.

Alex hoped Ianto wasn't looking for the comfort of shared responsibility, each salving the other's conscience with platitudes that they had no other choice. Or worse, that Ianto thought Alex was feeling guilty, castigating himself for following the order Ianto, himself, had given. Maybe Alex should have been, but guilt had never been one of his strong suits. You did what you had to do and if you were still alive you dealt and moved on. At least that was what had always worked for Alex before, but then before he had been mentally preparing to take his shot, literally or metaphorically, long before his finger was on the trigger.

"I'm surprised you aren't down in the morgue." Alex was aiming for snarky but had a nasty feeling his words had come out as defensive.

"No point until Owen has finished autopsying the creature," Ianto said blithely. "It was a good shot, an inch to the left and Jack might have been badly hurt."

"Jack's alive?" Alex couldn't stop the shocked exclamation as he spun around. So much for playing it cool, he was just glad Mulder was in another country and so had no chance of witnessing his unchecked reaction.

Alex was used to denying he had killed people; he was less used to other people doing it for him. Even as Alex stared at Ianto the shot replayed in his mind. The sudden rosette of dark blood blooming on the stupid, pale blue shirt. Eyes, a different shade but just as blue, wide with shock and staring sightlessly back at him. It was an illusion of course, but every time the images played over in Alex's mind Jack seemed to be looking at him a little more closely. He had tried, but there was no way, short of a miracle, that the shot hadn't been fatal even with Owen's array of alien healing gadgetry. If Jack had survived it would not have been for long.

"Alive," Ianto assured him, "demanding reports and grumping about people hovering at him when it was just a flesh wound."

"He can't be alive." Alex said sickly. "It can't be him. I _saw_ the shot, Ianto."

"It is him and he is alive," Ianto repeated. "Although I was lying about the hovering - even Gwen has told him to stop trying to milk it." Ianto cocked his head at Alex. "He asked after you."

Alex ignored that. "What happened?" he demanded.

"He got better." Ianto suggested succinctly.

"No he didn't." Alex grabbed Ianto's shoulders and forced the other man to look at him, to hear what Alex was saying. "You do not survive getting hit like that." But there wasn't any sign of madness or denial in Ianto's expression, just a slightly guilty reticence. "He's not human," Alex whispered, appalled at the realisation, hands falling away from Ianto to hang limply by his sides.

It fit. It fit so horribly well. No human could have survived and, if Ianto wasn't lying or deluded, that meant that Jack couldn't be human. Aliens healed, he'd seen it happen, both in the field and in a Consortium lab that they hadn't thought that the aliens knew about. Which meant that, despite all Alex's promises to himself, another alien had slithered its way into his body. Not that Jack slithered, more like strutted, and if Alex was being fair it was he himself who, at the time, had begged, pleaded and demanded that Jack fuck him. Alex just wasn't feeling very fair at that moment, not when Jack _knew_ how he felt.

Ianto's words tumbled over themselves and each other as he tried to make himself understood, head shaking with denial. "He is! According to _every_ scan we have. He just... doesn't seem to stay dead."

Alex wasn't listening. Jack wasn't there to yell at but Ianto was. Ianto who had a relationship with Jack that the rest of them had given up trying to understand. Ianto who might not have been Jack's confidant but who seemed to know everything from the combination of Jack's safe where the technology they didn't dare use was kept to the location of Owen' porn stash. Ianto who had stood silently by and watched as Jack had run him through his paces on the firing range and who had carried out Jack's order to slip retcon into Mulder's drink so that Alex didn't have to do it himself. Ianto who had given Alex the order to fire.

"You knew!" Alex yelled, anger blowing away all restraint. His fingers gripped tight into the muscle of Ianto's arms, painting finger marks the colour of Ianto's dark suit through Ianto's shirt and onto the pale skin that lay beneath. "When you told me to take the shot, you knew!"

Ianto froze for a second, a rabbit in front of an oncoming juggernaut, but the moment passed, all emotion draining away until Ianto looked at him with an infuriating calm. "Of course I knew."

Alex had Ianto pinned against the wall in seconds, rage temporarily burning any rational thought from his mind. His fingers fisted in the lapels of Ianto's suit, the material taut and tangling, stopping him from forming more than claws. He slammed Ianto against the bricks in frustration. The relief that could be gained from beating the crap out of Ianto was outweighed by the knowledge of what Jack would do to him. Of what Jack was capable of doing to him.

Plus, despite what Mulder might believe, Alex did have some self-control and didn't always resort to violence even when he desperately needed to hit someone. Violence was what had got him into the fucking mess after all. Violence, secrets and aliens. Was this how Mulder felt every time the truth was hidden away from him? Every time Alex stood in front of him and just with his presence taunted Mulder with the answers that Alex wouldn't reveal? Alex almost felt sympathy for the agent. Needing to attack in some way, Alex kissed Ianto, the action wild and savage and all the provocation that should have been needed. Jack wasn't there but Ianto was; Jack's shadow, Jack's messenger boy. Ianto was wide-eyed and frozen, tasting of coffee and blood from where Ianto had bitten his lip when he hit the wall. No struggle, no objection and Alex half-sobbed, breath hitching in his throat because he wanted the fight so badly.

The fear and bitterness, unfocused but undiminished, began to turn inward without a target to spend itself on. Alex didn't resist when Ianto carefully disengaged him; he had no strength for anything but the pain that burned inside, wanting to escape to become an inferno. Alex tried to turn away but Ianto covered Alex's hands with his own, keeping Alex close.

"Ianto..." Alex began, not sure what he was going to say but feeling he had to say something.

Ianto kissed him gently. "I am not Jack. Nor am I Mulder."

Alex barked with bitter laughter, pulling his hands free and stepping back. "I think this time I was Mulder." Alex glared at Ianto as Ianto looked him over, waiting for Ianto to comment. When Ianto didn't speak he growled "What?"

Ianto wiped a smear of blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb and quirked an eyebrow. As he stalked forwards Alex gave ground in surprise. On many levels it should have been ludicrous; quiet Ianto in his pristine suit, unarmed and rarely fighting anything more deadly that the paperwork. Alex could feel the weight of the gun at his back under the comforting shell of his leather jacket. Even without a gun, Alex knew he could stop the charade any time he wanted. Ianto apparently wasn't about to fight him, but if Alex wasn't mistaken it looked like Ianto might still give him the distraction he needed. A distraction he wasn't about to get if he kept running away.

Alex stopped, drawing himself up in a facsimile of Mulder's defiant stance. Ianto paused for a moment, and Alex allowed his chin to dip briefly in a nod before raising it, jaw clenched. Ianto's nod was just as shallow but Alex's cock jumped at the gesture. They both knew the way things were heading. Alex figured that sex would do just as well as violence to calm his jangling nerves and would be a much better sop for the dark feelings that recent events had raised in him.

Ianto took the final steps until there was just the space of a breath between them. Alex refused to do more than raise his chin further. Ianto's fingers wrapped around his throat and for a bewildering second Alex wondered how Ianto knew about Mulder's little kink until he realised that Ianto was just reacting to his cues. It was best not to underestimate the observational powers of a man who could spot the first coffee pangs across a crowded hub.

The pressure of the touch on his neck was more caress than threat but Alex refused to treat it as anything less than serious. Ianto might not know how easy it was to kill someone from the light grip he had, but Alex could think of enough ways for both of them and he wasn't about to take the chance that Ianto didn't know. Ianto leant forward and kissed him again, rougher than he had before, his grip on Alex's throat firming briefly and adding an edge to the gesture. Alex allowed Ianto's tongue to spread his lips, drinking in the possession in the action. Ianto was being annoyingly careful not to cut off either air or artery but was still doing enough that Alex was supernaturally aware of the blood pounding through his body. Ianto's mouth was soft despite the hardness of the kiss, devouring him with unrelenting compassion; it was the velvet glove to the iron hand at his throat.

Ianto broke the kiss. "Is this what you want?" Ianto hissed in Alex's ear, his free hand reaching down to squeeze Alex's cock roughly.

'No' Alex wanted to scream. 'I want to never have found out about aliens. I want to have never pulled that damn trigger. I want Jack to be dead like he should be. I want Jack to be standing here so I can punch the fucker. I want to know what Mulder would have been like before they started fucking with his head. I want never to have met him or you. I want to know nothing and everything. I want the truth and I want you to lie to me.'

"Please," he whispered instead, barely able to get the word out. All he could hope for was an excuse not to think for the ten seconds or ten hours or however long he lasted.

Ianto relaxed his grip on Alex's neck slightly, thumb leaving the carotid to stroke along the line of Alex's jaw. It was enough of a opening that Alex lunged forward, meaning to reclaim the kiss and lose himself in it. However as he moved Ianto moved with him, pivoting them both so that Alex now had his back to the wall. The fingers clamped back, quelling, and Alex submitted like a kitten to the scruff. Ianto backed him up, step by slow step, hand brushing Alex's groin with every step. Alex wasn't scared of Ianto. Ianto unlike Jack, or even himself, just wasn't one of those people that you were scared of, but there was something in Ianto's expression that made Alex shiver. It was just lust, Alex told himself, ball-clenching, nerve-tingling, adrenalin-pumping lust. He almost believed it as well, and that almost was making a good thing even better. The wall was hard against his back and he was thankful for the protection of his leather against the rasp of the brick even if it did nothing to pad the sharp bulk of his gun. The irony of his position, exactly where he had pinned Ianto barely minutes before, did not escape him. Nor, he suspected, from the slight gleam in Ianto's eye had it been entirely accidental.

"Don't move," Ianto ordered, fingers squeezing Alex's neck swiftly to reinforce the command.

The heel of the hand that had been teasing Alex's cock moved more firmly over Alex's erection, massaging and stroking it, long fingers positioning and curling, lower, over the mass of Alex's balls. As Alex acquiesced to Ianto's touch, arms hanging loose and head back in surrender, the touch increased in both strength and speed. That Alex was in danger of coming in his trousers had ceased bothering him long before he hit the wall and, as Ianto continued, the possibility was starting to look increasingly likely. The combination, and contrast, of the gentle pressure and soft skin at his throat and the rough grip squeezing him through the material of his jeans was speaking directly to the darkness that had raged within him. The promise in the hypnotic rhythm was so close to being enough that, without conscious thought, Alex began to push into Ianto's hand.

The fingers around his neck tightened warningly. "I said, 'Don't move'," Ianto reminded him severely, "unless you want me to stop?"

Alex whimpered but forced himself to stillness. He hoped that was answer enough because if Ianto did stop he really would shoot someone starting with himself. Ianto dropped a swift kiss onto his lips and Alex wasn't entirely sure if it was a reward or a punishment so accepted it as both. The hand that had been grinding his cock through the denim was removed only so that it could begin work on his belt and fly. Ianto's hand was slightly chilled and Alex would have sucked in a breath if he had thought he had any to spare. Ianto wasted no time allowing Alex to acclimatise, instead jacking him fast and hard. The hand at his neck was gone but his mouth was blocked by Ianto's. He was lost; somewhere in Ianto's hand and on Ianto's lips and tongue he existed but the rest of him was nothing but a live connection between those points. The feeling arched through him, whiting out thought and sense. There were no aliens, no secrets. The blood on his hands was scoured clean along with the pain in his heart. It didn't last long, nothing ever did and pleasure even less so, but for the length of those few stuttering breaths Alex was in bliss.

The world came back in tangled pieces; the damp warmth of Ianto's hand around his dick, the uncomfortable press of his gun, the smell of the bay and the low purr of traffic so far below them. Ianto withdrew his hand carefully and gave him one, final, almost chaste kiss.

"You want..?" Alex offered shakily.

Ianto looked faintly embarrassed. "It's okay. This sort of thing just doesn't..." He shrugged, stepping away to give Alex room to gather himself together. Alex closed his fly but otherwise just allowed himself to slide down the wall, drawing his knees up as he sat and peering up at Ianto. He wondered if Ianto's physical withdrawal was just his way of putting distance between himself and what he had just done. Shame was up there with guilt on the list of things that Alex didn't really do; it seemed unfair although not entirely suprising that Ianto did. What did it say about them that Ianto could engage in kinky and quasi-public sex and the aspect of that which bothered him most about it was that he was not the same type of fucked-up adrenaline junky that Alex was, and Alex was willing to bet that most of Torchwood Three were?

Alex watched vaguely as Ianto carefully wiped his hand on a handkerchief he had magicked from his sleeve. He wanted to ask if Ianto did that type of thing often. If Jack ever needed Ianto to help him burn out the rage or fear or pain, dashing himself against the implacable force of the power he had given Ianto for that very purpose. If, in his own way, Ianto ever submitted to Jack in return, unafraid despite all the knowledge he possessed of what Jack was or what he could do. It seemed wrong, though, to break the too brief and fragile peace that Ianto had helped him find just to satisfy his own prurience when there were so many other ways in which he could shatter it. Alex could still feel the anger at Jack's lies, Torchwood's lies, within him but it was damped down and manageable, something real rather than an all-consuming monster. It had become something that could be dealt with by time and thought, rather than blood and bullets; at least Alex hoped so.

Looking at the composed young man before him, Alex wondered if Ianto had ever felt that same anger and how he dealt with it. Was Ianto's obsession with tidiness the only way he could deal with the chaos of the universe? The filing a pathological cry for order? Even on a rooftop having just had sex with an out of control assassin who had just discovered he had been lied to, again, Ianto's first subsequent action was to check and pack the equipment that said assassin had been using. Alex watched Ianto's long fingers, fascinated, as they stroked the gun, gentling it as if it was a wild animal he was coaxing into a cage rather than the inanimate object which he was dismantling. Alex tried not to think about where those fingers had just been and whether Ianto saw Alex as another weapon to be preserved and maintained for maximum efficiency of purpose. He didn't think Ianto was that cynical. Although Jack would never admit it, Alex was of the opinion that Jack kept Ianto around for his charming naivety as much as the cut of his suit. Gwen might be the idealist and humanitarian but Ianto buried the bodies and still thought it was worth it without being a fanatic. That was rare and, in its own way, special.

"It's a nice piece." Alex commented neutrally.

Ianto nodded, not taking his eyes from his work as he cleaned each piece carefully before putting it away in its place in the case. "That it is."

"It's yours." Alex realised suddenly, a cold feeling that had nothing to do with the weather chilling him.

Ianto nodded.

"Why didn't you say you were a sniper?" Alex tried to keep the angry edge out of his voice. More secrets and lies. Was that all his life was? It had been stupid of him to expect better but there had just been something about Torchwood Three that had got under his skin and made him lower his guard.

Ianto looked up from the gun for a moment. "Because I'm not."

"So what are you doing with a top end sniper rifle like that one?" Alex growled.

Ianto frowned at him then shrugged. "I grew up on a farm, shot cans and the occasional rabbit when it had mix and needed putting out of its misery. At school I was a cadet and did well enough on the range that I competed a few times at regional level. Of course when Torchwood recruited me the trainers were overjoyed to get a recruit who knew which end of the barrel was which. UNIT tended to recruit the military types before Torchwood could get near them so I was their golden boy. At least on the range. When I flunked the fieldwork I got sent back to logistics but they let me keep my rifle. I still target shoot on occasion."

Alex felt himself relaxing again. Ianto's explanation was all too believable. He had seen Ianto shoot, and wasn't about to argue over his skill, but finding out Ianto was a fucking sniper would have been almost worse than finding Jack was a whatever-he-was. Jack you could believe anything of, but if Ianto had the psychology to be a sniper then they were all in trouble.

"I'm surprised they let you keep it?"

"Maybe 'let' is too strong a term." A smile flicked across Ianto's face. "One of the advantages in working in logistics."

Their gazes locked across the length of the roof, sharing a moment of amusement at cheating the system.

"So, is this one of those Torchwood Three rites of passage - discovering the boss doesn't stay dead?"

"No," Ianto looked back to his work. "I know and Gwen knows - she saw him get shot just before she joined. And now you. I believe that's it."

"Gwen told you?" Alex didn't know why that surprised him, everyone talked to Ianto, but he had pegged Gwen as the type who, despite liking gossip, jealously guarded secrets.

Ianto shook his head. "I saw it on the security monitors."

"But you knew already?"

Ianto placed the final piece of the rifle in its case and clicked the clasps shut. "I suspected," he said with finality. Alex wasn't sure if Ianto's back was stiffer than his voice but he'd have backed either against high-grade steel. Alex wasn't about to let Ianto off the hook when the man had knowingly set him up. Set him up and then intentionally tried to fool him as if Alex wouldn't know a kill shot when he made it.

"How did you feel about it when you found out?" Alex pressed.

Ianto stood up and walked to the edge of the roof, apparently ignoring Alex and his question. Alex recognised the tactic for what it was and gave Ianto a _little_ time to think. It was the only allowance he was willing to make, but then he had never claimed to be nice and Ianto owed him.

"I didn't take it in to start with," Ianto admitted, staring out over the city.

"And when you did?" Alex sidled closer.

"I hated him for a while," Ianto whispered. "Someone I loved had died and all I could think was why him and not her?" Ianto's head dipped as he paused once more. When he raised his head again his voice was stronger, strong enough to hear the broken rawness of it. "Then I realised that he would always be in the position of watching other people die and I didn't know how to face him."

"I never used to worry about how I was going to face people. Hell, I didn't even worry about how I was going to face Mulder." It wasn't exactly empathy but it was the best Alex could do. Alex had spent too much of his life trying desperately to stay alive to think about the disadvantages of immortality. Even after he had lost his arm his focus had been on survival. He couldn't forgive either of them, not yet, but he could begin to sympathise a little. "I don't like surprises." It was the closest he could come to a concession.

It was something, at least, to know that Ianto understood the mixed feelings that finding out could bring, not that Ianto had found out in quite so personal a way. Alex wondered how Gwen had reacted? Whether it had made a difference that Gwen had know from the beginning of her association with Jack rather than finding out later. Had she found someone to talk about it with if she needed? Jack he supposed. Would talking to Jack help? Alex had to admit it might, but he wasn't sure he was ready for that. He had shot many people over the years but, as no one had forced him to draw bead on Mulder, he had never shot anyone as close to him as Jack and the hurt of that had not been fully salved by discovering that his grief had been needless. Not only was it his most regretted betrayal, but Alex hadn't known Jack would survive when he pulled the trigger and Jack, like Ianto, must know that. Alex had looked into the eyes of people he had been willing to kill before but they had never been able to look back at him after the deed was done. Equally, while Alex expected information to be hidden from him, the enormity of it when Jack and Ianto knew the situation he had come from... Alex was glad Jack was alive but at the same time Alex wasn't sure he knew, or could trust, the man who Jack had been revealed to be.

"I'm sure Jack would give you a few days off if you wanted." There were times Alex honestly wondered if Ianto had some telepathic ability that he was keeping quiet about.

"To do what?" Alex asked bitterly, "Sit around and think?" Ianto would understand the torment of that.

//  
_  
Alex had made it his job to find out as much information about his colleagues as possible even before he arrived, more when he decided he would be staying. When he had realised that the data he was hacking out of the computer was actually being fed to him in a series of tests it had immediately become suspect. Without that resource finding information on most of the team had been easy enough. Gwen was an open book, too new to be in the habit of hiding her life. Owen was not much harder, mostly because he didn't care. The information on Tosh was scanty and Alex couldn't quite decide if that was because she had hidden the information well enough or because she really did have that quiet a life when she was not chasing aliens around Wales. Ianto was not much better and Jack was to all intents and purposes, non-existent. Despite that setback, Alex wanted the explanation for the look of apology that had passed between Jack and Ianto at the meeting with Mulder. He discovered that, in the end, all he had needed to do to find out everything he wanted to know about his colleagues was to buy Owen a few pints. After that night Alex had known all about Ianto's ex-girlfriend and it hadn't taken him long before he also knew all about Canary Wharf. Owen hadn't known much of Ianto's history but he had given Alex enough leads to follow to find out the rest. Or at least enough leads that Alex got close enough to the answers that Jack took him aside for a quiet chat._

Alex was staring at Jack by the time he finished detailing the destruction of Torchwood 1 and what had come after.

"I can understand your wanting to check up on us." Jack had a satisfied air which suggested to Alex that Jack had expected no less and been glad to be proved right. "And it was interesting to see what you could manage to dig up but this..." He looked out of the office window to where Ianto was ghosting across the Hub, a stack of files in his arms.

Alex nodded, understanding what Jack wasn't saying and wasn't asking. Even with Jack's explanation, being warned off something normally just made Alex look harder albeit more discreetly. Jack knew that as well as Alex did. Alex couldn't actually remember the last time someone had appealed to his good nature; even he wasn't completely sure that he had one. Mulder would say that it was the biggest X-File of them all; Alex Krycek developing a sense of loyalty to a comrade. Still, Mulder never knew as much as he thought he did and Alex had more to gain letting Ianto's ghosts rest.

"What would have happened if I had just asked you for the information?" Alex challenged.

"I would have given it to you." Jack looked thoughtful as if considering an eventuality that had never occurred to him. "And Ianto would have rolled over the money put on how far you would get until the next wager."

Alex shook his head. Owen was always starting some bet or other but by mutual agreement Ianto was the one who ran the book. No one trusted Owen's figures.

"Are you going to let me in on what the next Torchwood membership ritual is?" Alex asked.

Jack smiled. "Now where would be the fun in that?" he said.  
  
//

"I may have an alternative," Ianto interrupted his thoughts. "What would you say to a trip back to the States? We have a contact at the British Embassy in DC but we could do with someone briefing them about the latest developments and liaising with the UNIT representative there."

Alex examined Ianto closely, not sure if the offer was genuine or part of some greater ploy. "Would Jack go for that?"

"If that's what you want." The official-face-of-Torchwood Ianto was back, all control and no emotion. Alex knew how that worked and didn't react to the shift any more than he had reacted to the cracks in Ianto's facade when Alex had pushed him earlier. People dealt with the shit that got thrown at them in their line of work however they could and good luck to them. At least Alex could rest easy knowing he had someone competent making the travel arrangements. Not that he would ever admit it but the whole Hong Kong debacle had been partly due to the fact he hadn't actually intended to end up there in the first place. Going back to the States though... the possibility of running into Mulder again weighed against the knowledge of all the other people who might be interested into running into him.

"Your contact - he's Torchwood?" Alex asked. No harm in getting the facts together, after all. A little time away to get his head together. Maybe go a few rounds with Mulder to make sure he wasn't going soft and put in perspective all his damn worry over _not_ killing a colleague. Alex told himself he should be trying to find out how Jack did whatever it was he did, and whether he could get in on the action, rather than tying himself up in knots about it. He almost believed it as well.

"MI6," Ianto corrected. "We do work with the security agencies sometimes, especially in foreign countries. He's good at what he does though." The last was said without a trace of condescension. Alex had heard enough bitching about the other security forces that Torchwood dealt with to realise he should be impressed. He wasn't sure if that was a good or a bad thing.

"You know him?"

Ianto nodded and Alex thought he was hiding a smile. It was tempting, very tempting.

"What about the Consortium? And the FBI? They still have me on their wanted list."

Ianto raised a hand and waggled it in a so-so gesture.

"The FBI have been taken care of. It would probably be better for everyone if you didn't deliberately tease them, or any of their agents." Ianto fixed Alex with a quelling look which he met with a grin. "You know the limitations of retcon and we don't have enough for all the people who want a piece of you. The Consortium - that's harder. You're probably still on their shit list but far enough down that if you don't actively give them another reason they won't go gunning for you. It's up to you if you want to risk it."

Did he want to risk it? Was the bigger risk in America or in Cardiff? If the Consortium wanted him gone they would come at him with guns; they didn't bother to go to the effort of tampering with his mind any more. At least he didn't think they did. Jack wouldn't kill him or order his death, but then he didn't need to when one little pill could be just as effective and required a lot less clean-up afterward.

"And when does the retcon get slipped into my coffee? If I don't go or if I do?"

Ianto looked offended. "We haven't retconned Gwen have we?" Alex raised an eyebrow dubiously. "Well, we haven't. And she is more likely to talk than you are. Getting water out of a stone is nothing compared to getting a straight answer out of you. However Cardiff isn't exactly the place to take time out to think, if that is what you want."

Think, yes, but not while he was idle. He hated to appear weak but Alex knew he would hate himself more if he let his anger get in the way of his job. If anyone could understand that it was probably the man standing next to him.

"Why did Jack send you to talk to me?" Alex asked suspiciously.

Ianto gave a half shrug as if to say the others are busy and fetching and relaying messages was what he did. "Jack wasn't sure you would want to talk to him right now. He's there when you are ready."

_Liar_ Alex thought. "And if I don't want to talk?"

"He's ready for that as well, although we all hope you don't want to leave." The phrase was pat and prepared but Alex thought a sliver of truth shone through Ianto's workday mask. They didn't want him to go and Alex was surprised at the warm feeling that that knowledge created. It was nice to be wanted for reasons other than being a punch bag, target or source. He just didn't want to be lied to either.

"I was thinking more punching him out than walking out." Alex admitted. The desire was still there, coiling in his belly like a snake, waiting for the moment it could poison his mind. That was what Alex feared. Sometimes even a second's hesitation could be fatal and just because it might not be permanently fatal to Jack didn't mean that one of the others in the team wouldn't pay the price.

"Well, you've threatened Owen," Ianto pointed out complacently. "Taking a swing at Jack is pretty much next on the list."

Alex laughed, realising he had made his mind up."When I get back from the States, you are going to show me that list."

Ianto's smile actually reached his eyes. "Deal."

Ianto put out a hand out and Alex clasped it. Ianto looked Alex over carefully and tutted. "We'll have to get you a new wardrobe. The jeans and leather are nice but we can't have you turning up at the embassy looking like a rent boy." He picked up the rifle case, preparatory to leaving. "Jack's going to die when he sees you in a suit."

Alex found he had nothing to say to that.


End file.
